In conventional merchandise display cabinets, such as those used to display frozen food, beverage cans, and other items, transparent glass windows are used to increase the visibility of the merchandise in the display case. A plurality of shelves or plates divides the display cabinet into a plurality of display/storage chambers. The display cabinet may also be divided into two chambers, each of which is maintained at a different temperature. Therefore, several kinds of merchandise, each having different preservation temperatures, can be stored within the display/storage chambers of the same case at the same time.
In one prior structure of display cabinet, the storage/display chamber is divided into two chambers, such as a freezing or refrigerating chamber and a heating chamber. The refrigerating chamber is refrigerated by a refrigerating unit disposed in a lower portion of the display cabinet. The heating chamber is heated by a flat plate heater disposed on the upper surface of the shelves. The two chambers can be connected to one another by a controllable sealing mechanism to form a single refrigerating chamber.
In these display structures, a glass door is disposed on one side of the display cabinet to close the cabinet opening, maintain the desired temperature, and facilitate loading and removing merchandise. Customers normally remove merchandise placed just behind the door in the front of the storage/display chamber. Therefore as the stored merchandise supply depletes, the customer must reach further into the chamber to remove the merchandise positioned in the back of the chamber, and it is often difficult to reach this merchandise.
Furthermore, when the number of items of stored merchandise is reduced, additional merchandise should be loaded into the storage/display chamber. However, if the additional merchandise fills up the open space in the front of the chamber, the merchandise disposed in the back of the chamber is never removed. To remedy this, merchandise in the inner part of the chamber should be removed before new merchandise is loaded into the storage/display chamber, and older merchandise should be placed in the front of the chamber to be easily removed by the customer. However, this merchandise rotating operation is very time consuming.